Back up (kind of) question

[Nicolaskl]

I've got a laptop, desktop, and a 250 GB external hard drive. What I'm trying to do is make sure that the My Documents folder on my desktop and the external is identical, and that they also contain everything thats in My Documents on the laptop (but the laptop won't have everything that the other two locations have since it has a smallish hard drive).

Basically I'll be copying from the desktop to the external, and to the desktop from the external, and from the laptop to the external, but not from the external to the laptop.

I fiddled around with Window's backup wizard but it seems like it only creates a single backup file and I want all these files to be "live" so I and others can access them from my external. I can't just copy and paste because it asks if you want to replace everything in the folders and if you say yes it'll end up replacing gigs and gigs of files which isn't acceptable and if you say no it doesn't copy anything.

Anyone have a way in XP to make this work or know any software that would make this easier? Thanks for any help.

 

[dekard]

i use a domain controller to make this happen, but i'd imagine that a lot more than you'd want to do. check syncback se for a low cost solution that can synchronize that data for you on your schedule.

i like it since i can use one program to do what your talking about and also upload an offline copy to a secure ftp site... great for offline backup.. very safe..

 

[pigster]

You can do this with SyncToy and scheduled tasks

 

[djnes]

I would look into removing the drive from the external cage and putting it into one that has a USB connection as well as a LAN connection...to run it as a NAS.